She threw out her arms, weakly trying to fight up circulation, and a second time the ruthless spirit of the wild came very close.
To her terrified eyes it seemed to leap out of the darkness of the spruce, a material presence, and mock her with a shout that reverberated across the fireless land.
It rushed upon her. She could hear the crunch-crunch of its footsteps in the crust. Its grip fell upon her shoulder, and she shrieked insanely.
“Steady, missus, steady!” soothed a mumbling, half-articulate voice.
And not till the spoken words smote on her consciousness could she realize that the material presence was a humble man. Then she gave a little moan of relief and put out a hand for Jose to share in her discovery.
In the arctic gloom they could not see the man’s face at all, but they gathered that he had been disturbed at supper by their cries, for he was capless and coatless. Also he held in his hand a generous slab of pilot-bread, and this it was which, cramming his mouth, rendered his speech so inarticulate. Wildly leading the race, the bread in his left hand and Blera’s frozen gantlet in his right, he hurtled them over the snows between the spruce trees and banged them into his cabin doorway.
At their advent five wolf-dogs leaped up snarling from their rest beside the stove.
“Lie down!” gurgled Cantine’s and Blera’s rescuer.
He kicked the dogs soundly in the ribs till they retreated into the huge empty wood-box that stood behind the stove.
“I don’t like the brutes inside,” he mumbled, still wrestling convulsively to get rid of the gagging pilot-bread, “but it’s a case of have to keep them inside or get them eaten whole. Tutchi’s Village is full of savage semi-wolves, and they run the river in a hunt-pack every night.”